A known seat slide apparatus for a vehicle is disclosed, for example, in Japanese Patent Laid-Open Publications No. 9-0011781 and No. 2001-158259 and in French Patent Publication No. 276870. The known seat slide apparatus for the vehicle includes at least a pair of lower rails provided away from each other in vehicle width direction and fixed on a vehicle floor, a pair of upper rails supporting a seat and being slidable relative to each corresponding lower rails, and a loop-shaped release handle for releasing locked condition of the upper rail on the lower rail.
Generally, the upper rail is locked by a pawl of a pawl portion which is rotatably supported by the upper rail engaging with a corresponding recess on the lower rail. The release handle rotates the pawl portion, more specifically, when the release handle is operated, the pawl portion rotates, as a result, the pawl disengages from the recess for allowing the upper rail to slide on the lower rail.
An end portion of the loop-shaped release handle is supported by a bracket fixed on the upper rail, and the end portion of the loop-shaped release handle is cooperatable with the pawl member. The loop-shaped release handle is operated by a passenger griping and moving the front portion of the release handle in vertical direction.
When one of rails needs to be replaced due to some sort of reason during a vehicle seat assembling process or after the vehicle is purchased, both a sub-unit including the upper and lower rails and the loop-shaped release handle has been replaced as one unit because each end portions of the loop-shaped release handles are fixed to the upper rails and not able to be removed from the upper rails.
It is uneconomical that replacing the unit including the upper and lower rails and the release handle because the unit still contains usable components.
Thus, the purpose of the invention is resolving these aforementioned problems of the known invention.